The New American
SINGAPORE — 2018 witnessed the signing of the Sino-Vatican deal between the Roman authorities and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), arguably in a bid to tackle the status of the underground church in China. Yet the CCP’s suppression of Christians, regardless of denomination, has continued unabated.
A report by Texas-based ChinaAidindicated that there were 1,256 cases of religious persecution in 2017, up 66 percent from 2016. However, the very same year the Sino-Vatican accord was inked, state sanctions on Christian activities began to escalate. A U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedoms (USCIRF) annual report posited that 5,000 Protestants and 1,000 church leaders were arrested for faith-linked activities in 2018. Such arrests were in addition to the demolition of thousands of churches across China. “In Henan province, local authorities required churches to remove the first commandment from the list of the Ten Commandments on the ground that it placed loyalty to God above loyalty to the CCP,” the report read.
Since the People’s Republic of China came into being in 1949, the CCP has tried many times to clamp down on religious activities. For instance, the Legion of Mary that was brought into China in 1937 was identified by despot Mao Zedong as “Public Enemy No. 1.”
When Fr. Aedan McGrath, a Columbian Father tasked to spread the Legion of Mary in China, introduced the group to the communists as a spiritual organization, their reply was, “This is a great organization, just like Communism.”
It is noteworthy that there did exist similarities between the Legion of Mary and international communism. Each implemented the nomenclature of the Roman legion, and both used the term “Praesidium” to refer to their group and group meetings. Also, the legion’s color is red, just like that of the communists.
